Christian Keysers

The Intermediate Hippocampus Integrates Shock-Observation and Spatial Information during Observational Fear Memory

Convergent and selective representations of pain, appetitive processes, aversive processes, and cognitive control in the insula

The paper identifies convergent and selective functional zones in the insula using fMRI data, revealing a hierarchical convergence architecture across pain, appetitive, aversive, and cognitive control domains.

Modeling behavior to disentangle motion-related effects in functional ultrasound imaging in awake, head-fixed mice

This paper introduces a behavior-informed modeling framework to account for motion-related confounds in functional ultrasound imaging during naturalistic behaviors in awake mice.

Dissociable Effects of Early and Adolescent Adversity on Emotional Contagion

This study examines how early and adolescent adversity differently affect emotional contagion in rats, finding distinct effects on observer-to-demonstrator and demonstrator-to-observer emotional transfer, with sex-specific pathways.

Heightened Play following Play Observation in the Absence of 22KHz Calls in Juvenile Rats

This study investigates positive emotional contagion in juvenile rats through play observation, finding increased play behavior after observing playful demonstrators without 22 kHz calls.

Representational geometry of emotional empathy in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and in the mid-posterior insula.

The paper investigates how brain regions encode emotional facial expressions using representational similarity analysis, finding that vmPFC and mid-posterior insula encode emotion categories and arousal+valence better than arousal alone.

Endogenous opioid receptor system mediates costly altruism in the human brain

The paper investigates how the endogenous opioid receptor system influences altruistic costly helping by linking MOR availability to brain activity during vicarious pain and helping behavior.

Neural mechanisms of costly helping in the general population and mirror-pain synesthetes

The paper examines how mirror-pain synesthetes and non-synesthetes differ in their willingness to help others in pain, using fMRI to link brain activity to donation decisions across different pain-conveying modalities.

A multivariate brain signature for reward

The paper develops a Brain Reward Signature (BRS) using a LASSO-PCR model to predict reward and loss processing from brain activity, achieving high decoding accuracy across multiple tasks and samples.

Predictive coding during action observation revealed by human electrocorticographic activity

The paper uses ECoG to study how the action observation network integrates information during action observation, finding top-down beta and bottom-up gamma oscillations in predictable and unpredictable actions respectively.

Intracranial human recordings reveal intensity coding for the pain of others in the insula

The paper uses intracranial recordings to show that the insula encodes pain intensity from different stimuli with distinct spatial and temporal coding patterns.

Commanding or being a simple intermediary: how does it affect moral behavior and related brain mechanisms?

This paper investigates how commanding or acting as an intermediary affects moral behavior and brain mechanisms, finding no difference in agency between commanders and intermediaries but a neural response difference when agents are robots versus humans.

Predictive coding during action observation - a depth-resolved intersubject functional correlation study at 7T

The paper uses intersubject functional correlation with 7T fMRI to show that predictable action sequences trigger more feedback input to parietal regions than unpredictable ones.

Obeying orders reduces vicarious brain activation towards victim's pain

The paper shows that obeying orders reduces vicarious brain activation related to others' pain and decreases feelings of guilt and responsibility.

Parametric tests for Leave-One-Out Inter-Subject Correlations in fMRI provide adequate Type I error control while providing high sensitivity

This paper evaluates parametric tests for leave-one-out inter-subject correlations in fMRI, showing they control Type I error and are sensitive for detecting neural synchronization.

Neuro-computational mechanisms of action-outcome learning under moral conflict

The paper investigates action-outcome learning in moral conflicts using reinforcement learning models and fMRI, finding that model-based learning explains choices and reveals neural biases in valuing self-gain versus other-pain.

Multiband acceleration can provide moderate improvements in single-subject voxel-wise statistics in block-design task-based fMRI

This study shows that MB4 acceleration improves single-subject voxel-wise statistics in fMRI, with moderate effect sizes in the action observation network, but may over-penalize temporal autocorrelation.

Bayesian statistics show a lack of change in excitability following bi-hemispheric HD-TDCS over the primary somatosensory cortices

This study uses Bayesian analysis to show that a new HD-tDCS protocol does not reliably modulate somatosensory cortex excitability across participants.

Harm to others acts as a cingulate dependent negative reinforcer in rat

The paper demonstrates that rats exhibit harm aversion when choosing a lever that harms another rat, with anterior cingulate cortex involvement.

Action perception recruits the cerebellum and is impaired in spinocerebellar ataxia patients

This study shows that observing others' hand actions activates specific cerebellar regions and that SCA6 patients have impaired ability to perceive these actions.

Does higher sampling rate (Multiband + SENSE) benefit the detection of task correlated BOLD for cognitive neuroscience applications at 3T?

This study evaluates if higher multiband (MB) acceleration improves BOLD signal detection in cognitive tasks, finding MB4 provides better group-level results than lower acceleration.

Measuring shared responses across subjects using intersubject correlation

This paper introduces intersubject correlation analysis to measure shared neural responses across subjects in naturalistic scenarios.

Emotional Mirrors in the Rat’s Anterior Cingulate Cortex

The paper identifies mirror-like neurons in the rat's anterior cingulate cortex that encode both self-experienced pain and witnessed pain in others, but not fear.

Cingulate dependent social risk assessment in rats

This study shows that rats exhibit bidirectional distress transmission regardless of familiarity, with cingulate-dependent mechanisms influencing both observer and demonstrator behavior.

Perceiving Hesitation requires both the Motor and Mentalizing systems

The paper shows that detecting hesitation in others' actions involves both mentalizing and mirror neuron systems, with motor information necessary for attributing mental states.

Representing Multiple Observed Actions in the Motor System

This study shows the motor system can represent multiple observed actions through fMRI, revealing a mechanism for processing social interactions.

Where and how our brain represents the temporal structure of observed action

This study uses fMRI and EEG to show the brain encodes sequence-specific motor information for predictable action sequences, suggesting the motor system implements perceptual predictive coding.